Terrible Names
by Spider Milkshake
Summary: The stoat Daraga and his brother are trekking through the woodlands of Mossflower when a broken wheel on a passing wagon throws a wrench in the two vermin's plans. Can Daraga survive the ensuing action? Can his brother grow a brain cell and shut up for once? And what's the punch line? OCs, grey morality, a 3-part story. Enjoy!
1. Chapter 1

**Hello! Please enjoy part one of this three-part fanfic! And stay tuned this week for the exciting part two of three!**

**Enjoy the show!  
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**Terrible Names**

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Part I

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Daraga did not waste time snagging the tail of his slow brother and dragging him into the bushes on first sound of the beast approaching. The squirming stoat opened his mouth to yell out, but Daraga stuffed it full of a pawful of leaves before the scream could escape.

"Shut..! Up..!" The stoat forced his brother's snout shut around the wad of forest debris and glared daggers. Rising slowly from the crouch he had fallen into, the creature's paw strayed to the weapon sling across his back. Gripping the scored wooden handle, Daraga crept forward, silently praying the idiot sniveling behind him would find the sense to stay still.

His attention did not linger on his hapless relative for long. Up ahead, where the shrubbery thinned out, a wagon's canvas-covered canopy could be seen poking up into the sunlit areas of the path, a light blue in color and spangled with yellow cloth stars. Daraga's eyes narrowed as he bellied down and wriggled forward until he was as far as he dared out of the thick Mossflower jungle. He could make out the shape of the traveling wagon around the next bend, and around it several creatures paced. What sort of beasts he could not tell, though it was a fair guess that their species were mixed. One tall lanky figure stooped at one of the wheels and quickly rose again, shaking his head. The stoat bared a fang-wheel troubles. It made sense. The hot dry season could make the beaten path as hard as granite, and one careless misdirection into a rut could spell doom for a weakened spoke. The stoat rose with the noise of a fish breathing and skirted around the edge of the bushes, scuttling in the shadows of the trees just to the east side of the path. His dark mottled fur and patterned brown kilt made this a simple matter.

As he came closer to the sight of the wagon accident, the stoat could hear the voices of some of the louder creatures in the stranded party:

"Well, I'm not the one that said 'left', you said that and now look at that wheel!" Daraga was sure the speaker was one of the taller beasts, and a female by the sound of it.

"I nevah! You sure 'tweren't him that said left, m'gel?" Clearly the target of her rage was a hare, and one of the flatland race at that.

"It was you, finkface," the female said, her tone about as blunt as the cudgel she had slung over her shoulders. "Don't bring Toolum into this. It's yore fault and you know it!"

The hare snuffled and shook in the paws and whiskers. He began to stalk off in bad temper but paused just long enough to give the damaged wheel a sharp kick. A small bit of wood snapped off one of the bent spokes and stuck fast in the beast's hide just above his ankle. With a howl, the hare limped and cursed away, putting looks of mixed merriment and startlement on the faces of the rest of the party.

"Young fool. Coulda broke the spoke even worse, behavin' like that." The female unslung the cudgel from her back and placed a paw on the rim of the wheel. Daraga leaned forward curiously. This female was obviously in charge, and on closer inspection he was sure she was a badger of some kind. A small badger, or perhaps not fully grown, but a badger nonetheless.

"Let 'im go cool off'n, Mizzus. Bowflogg can't help bein' 'ot-tempered. He's got that, er... family line goin', ho urr..."

"Thank you, Toolam, but I know full well how to deal with a disobedient leveret." The badger stood and gave the wheel a final pat, handing the cudgel off to a young otter, "When he comes back from fumin' I'll take care of his foolishness once and for all. He'll never disobey me again..!"

"Hoo..." The mole wiped sweat from his brow, and the eavesdropping stoat was unsure if it was from the hot sun's rays or the glowering flame of the badger's rage so nearby. Cringing, the stoat ducked back into the foliage, intent to slink back to his brother and get clear of the suspicious strangers.

"Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaagh!"

Daraga fell on all fours and froze, his ears back, eyes squinted, and his fangs tightly clenched. His brother's screech of panic. Before him the party of wayward goodbeasts dropped what they were doing and all turned in the direction of the shouting.

"What in Hellgates..." the badgermaid began. The mole scrambled to retrieve a small woodworking hammer and held it close to him.

"Wh-what be that..?!"

"Toolam, get the old ones and babes inside the wagon." The badger ordered with a sweeping paw, snatching her club weapon from the webs of the young otter in the same motion, "Those who have weapons come with me. Nayda, grab the crossbow. Any vermin pokes their ugly head outta those woods, you shoot it."

Daraga lowered himself further into the deep leaf drift he had dropped into, hoping his camouflaged pelt and garb would keep him from view of the squirrel mother that was now guarding the wagon's seat with the deadly implement. The badger lowered her bulk as well, but her to surge off in a breakneck run straight for the source of the scream. Two otters and several mice armed with slings and staves bounded off after her.

"Satan's whiskers, brother..." Daraga shimmied backwards, using shade and light patterns to keep his form broken up to any prying eyes. Once he was fairly confident that the squirrel would not be able to spot him in the forest cover he half-stood and peered about. The squirrel was keeping her gaze centered on the disappearing figure of her badger leader and was paying the woodland edge no mind. Daraga ignored her-she was no threat after all.

He instead put his full speed to work, slipping between tree trunks and over logs as if it were second nature. Even with his skill at navigating the dense jungle, he was surely no match for an enraged badger in open country, but he was not going to slack. Idiot his brother may be, but disposable he was not.

Panting with exhaustion the stoat burst into the glade where he had last left his sibling cowering in the dirt. Stopping in shock for a moment he was fixated on the scuff-marks churning up the dirt-a sure sign of a struggle. He scanned the ground and to his relief found more signs, signs that his brother had managed to get away from his pursuers.

At least, for now. There was no telling what would happen to him once the badger caught up. Daraga wondered how his fellow stoat was even discovered in the first place.

"That stupid hare-of course..!" The stoat slapped his palm to his face before carrying on the track of the frightened vermin and the heated pursuers...

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To Be Continued...


	2. Chapter 2

Terrible Names

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Part II

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Bowflogg took his anger out on the tall stands of goldenrod flowers that blocked his way into the green-tinted forests. True, it had been him that had demanded a sudden veer to the left to avoid a tree's root slipping into the path... Only to bring the wagon he and the other refugees were fleeing in to a crashing halt in a sun-hardened rut. Still, flowers could not fight back, and they couldn't scold either. Bowflogg picked up a sizable walnut branch from the ground and wound up his good paw.

"Bally governess, she is. Hmph!" The young hare swished the bit of wood angrily downwards, severing the bobbing yellow heads from three of the wildflowers, "Who gave her th' bleedin' right to order around a..."

Bowflogg stopped in mid-thrash, staring slack-jawed with his ears twitching and erect. There was something moving slowly nearby, something much bigger than a harmless finch or undergrowth beetle. Whatever it was had to be nearly as big as him. Not as stealthy, though.

He picked his way over to the trunk of a walnut, probably the same one which had loosed his stick weapon seasons ago. His ears twitched periodically, in exact time to the sounds of the rambling crunches of leaves. As the sounds grew closer the hare began to hear a voice blubbering and whimpering.

"Why's he gotta leave me... I kin stealth too. I was just pointin' out to him where it was, why's he gotta shove me down?" There was a clunk and a quiet curse. A pine cone came rolling around the corner of the walnut, "An' then he shoves leaves in me mouth... Not very nice, not fair either! Why, if I 'ad two minutes alone with 'im I'd-"

"You'd wot?"

"Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaagh!"

Bowflogg had popped around the side of the tree trunk, startling what appeared to be either a stoat or a tall weasel. The verminous beast lay panting on the ground where he had stumbled back and fallen, and he was glaring pure hatred at the lagomorph.

"I say, ol' bag o' fleas, what's th' mattah?" The hare gave a cheeky grin, drawing back behind the massive tree just a bit. The stoat leapt upright and shook a clenched paw, but the rest of him was shaking too.

"What's wrong with ya, you floppy-eared lunatic!", he huffed. "Ya don't pop out at folks mindin' their own business! I'm a ruthless warrior, see! I coulda dropped you where ya stand!"

"Could you?" Bowflogg rubbed the side of his nose with one paw in an insulting gesture, "I'd pay twenty bushels o' barley t' see that from a low-life shadow-creeping woodland vermin as y'self."

"I could, an' I will if ya gets me mad enough!" The stoat reached for a sling hanging across his back, but drew back his paw and took on a puzzled look when he discovered that it was empty, "What th... Why, you stinkin' coward! Whaddja do with me knife? Come on!"

"Ooh, I didn't do nothing!" The hare cackled, bringing his paws up in boxing stance. He jabbed one, two and three straight across, taunting the stoat while never coming within grabbing distance. He was no warrior either, just a youngbeast taking full advantage of a sweet opportunity for fun, "Maybe it up an' ran out of shame of being used by a milksop instead of a real fighter!"

"Why you, you..." The stoat gasped, finding that his insult vocabulary was running on low, "You... you rabbit!"

Bowflogg stood back, his ears reddened and upright. He'd been called a rabbit by accident before-old hedgehogs loosing their sight, babes who had never seen a hare in the flesh-but to be called one intentionally! And by a skulking vermin nonetheless! It wasn't just his short life on the line anymore-his family honor was at stake!

"I will make y' spit blood!"

The hare took a flying leap over the tangled roots that separated them, plowing right into the mustelid's gut as he dropped down. The stoat's breath left him in a whoosh and his shoulder slammed hard against a stone buried under the deep leaves. He got over his shock almost as soon as the hare's thin fists came pummeling down, stunning the stoat but barely harming him. Twisting to find leverage against the similarly sized creature the stoat kicked out and instead of dislodging the hare tore a chunk from his tunic with sharp musteline toeclaws. The hare spotted the tattered bits of fabric raining down beside him and immediately had a change of plans. The beast hopped up with all the agility hares were praised for, but tripped backwards on a root with all the bumbling inattention they were supposed to lack.

Coughing, the stoat spit out several bits of leaf matter that had ended up in his mouth in the course of the scuffle. He scurried to his footpaws at the same time Bowflogg did. They stopped. Then they stared.

"Go on, make a move, vermin." Bowflogg's eyes were like flint.

"Nah, you move first, you gringing little bunny." The stoat's shone like garnets.

"Call me bunny again, and I'll kill you in such a way that your spirit will be dishonored and never find Dark Forest Gates!"

"As if ya could kill me! And as if you even know how t' do that!"

"I do! It's a Beltwood family secret!"

"Oh, sure, I'll believe that when geese grow fins-" The stoat paused, his mouth open slightly, "Wait, what?"

"What what?"

"Ahh, don't do that stupid rabbit 'wotwot' thing!"

"I wasn't, I was askin' what _what_!"

"What didja say before?"

"What, that it's a secret?"

"No! The... the name..."

Bowflogg became the color of radishes in a tub of beet juice. Though not entirely sure why, the stoat broke out into a fit of silly giggling.

"It's not funny!" Bowflogg took a step forward, "'Beltwood' is a family name and I happened t' be born into it! Stop laughin' like a gassed gannet!"

"Seriously? Yore name is... is..." The stoat crumpled on the ground, holding his sides and letting out a mute scream from the depths of his sense of humor, "Yore name is... h-heehee! It's really... hee... _Beltwood_?"

"Yeah, yeah, go on! Laugh it up!" The hare bit his lip in anger and embarrassment, beginning to stomp off, "It's not like it's the worst name in the world-yours is bound t' be stupider."

"H-hey, ya don't even know my name!"

"Don't know, don't wanna!"

"You sure? It's pretty awesome!"

The hare turned, his face sour.

"Fine, tell me. I'll forget it in a bit anyhow."

Daraga's brother stood up fully, posing in a noble and brave fashion from atop a small leafy hillock. Sniffing the air fondly, the beast uttered his name...

"I... am Falcontooth!"

"Uhh..."

"I know. It's fair mighty-soundin'!"

"N-hee-no... No it isn't."

"Wh-what?" Falcontooth came down from his pedestal of soil and dead plant matter, striding over to the hare in a bad temper, "What gives ya th' right to say how good or bad me name is, bunny rabbit?"

"The fact that th' name is simply factually unsound!" The hare chuckled, jumping back over a log to lengthen the distance between him and the steamed stoat, "How many teeth d'you suppose th' average falcon has, eh?"

"I-It's not supposed to be literal!" Falcontooth stomped the ground and felt around in the weapon sling one more time, hoping that he had simply missed the knife-handle before, "It's th' concept, not th' reality! There's no such wood as a Beltwood either!"

"Oh, but there's _something_..!" Bowflogg Beltwood winked. The stoat left off his search for a weapon and cocked his head to the side with one eye narrowed.

"Ew."

"What's 'ew'? C'mon, ol' chap, everybeast has one!"

"Not th' females, ya nitbrain."

"Well, _besides_ them, obviously," Bowflogg said with an exasperated sigh through his whiskers. "For a bally vermin, you're one prudish stoat, wot."

"I ain't no prude! I just ain't a shameless grassjumper like you either!"

"I'm not shameless! If I were half as shameless as some of th' harejacks around, why then, I'd have brought up th' nuances of love-and-Dibbun-mak-"

"Ack! No, no, no, not listenin'!" Falcontooth shied away, his countenance as soiled as his innocence, "Gah! So me name is stupid an' yores is that of a little perver-er... shameless bachelor 'are. Agree t' disagree..?"

The hare raised one eyebrow.

"So we can hurry up an' part ways?"

"Yes." The stoat thrust out a paw, grimacing.

"Right-o, then." The hare grasped it firmly, thoroughly enjoying the squicky look on the mustelid's face as they touched.

"Ya know, us two gents aren't all that different when y' think about it."

"Aside from th'...perverted thing..."

"Know any good taverns 'ereabouts?"

"I dunno. What's 'ereabouts? A league? Twenty?"

"Oh, y'know. Close enough t' walk to before sundown. I can slip away from th' lads an' th' ol' badgerlady taskmaster, an' we can chat about ale an' fillies an' Beltwoods..."

"Ennhhhh..."

There was a sound thrumming in the air between the treetrunks as the goodbeast and vermin loosed their hold on each others' paws. Falcontooth turned to ask what the sound was, but the words were drowned out by a colossal roar.

"EEEEEEEUUULAAAALIAAAAAA!"

The thrumming grew to a crashing as the matriarchal badger surged out of the surrounding undergrowth with her clubbing paw raised high over her head. Bowflogg and Falcontooth stood speechless for two tenths of a second, watching the enraged beast bolt towards them in slowed time.

But especially towards the stoat.

"My...me kilt is ruined..." He whimpered, frozen to the spot and crossing his legs with his bushy tail. Bowflogg tried to think of a heroic catchphrase, something the armored warrior would say to the charging force of nature to send it screeching to a halt before it struck the unjustly targeted creature down. But now that he thought he needed one they had all gone to hide in the dark inaccessible reaches of his brain. Also hiding? His courage. His legs gave out under him and he stared like an infant rabbit at the badger closing in, ears clutched tightly in his paws.

"Die, vermin scum!" The badger was mere paces away now. Falcontooth went to scream, but all that came out was a sound very like a falcon (whose beak was blocked with unneeded teeth). Daraga's brother cowered.

The badger maiden made a final leap, hurtling over several deadfall alders and on course to land on top of the quivering vermin beast.

A heavy limb from the walnut tree interrupted her flight. She had time only to look up and have her mouth filled with dead leaves before she was knocked to the ground. Groaning, she flailed at the smaller branches and the wood weight that was keeping her down. Bowflogg stood up again and blinked.

"Leave my idiot alone!"

The badger snarled and finally tossed the bruising branch aside on sight of another stoat, this one sliding down the bark of the tree's trunk on his claws and bearing a grimace of a fighter on his face. He hit the ground in a well-formed stance, a long knife with worn wooden handle grasped in his paw pointing out at his much larger opponent. Falcontooth's face lit up with joy on sight of his brother Daraga.

"Daraga, mate! Am I glad t' see ya or what!" He choked on his own sobbing breath, "I... I'd get up an' hug ya, but... I got scared when th' badger came and..."

Daraga glared at his sniveling sibling, signalling him to shut his mouth. As the less composed brother complied Daraga shifted his stance, flipping the knife several times over his paw in a stunning display of skill. At the last he took hold of it overhand, ready to stab or backlash.

"Do I need to repeat myself?"

The badger's grip on her cudgel tightened, threatening to crack the old wood it was made of. Her coal black eyes followed the stoat as he shuffled forward and around her side a few steps, aligning himself with weak spots.

In the background young hare and cowardly stoat looked at each other with wide eyes.

To Be Continued...


	3. Chapter 3

Terrible Names

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Part III (Finale!)

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In the aggressive tradition of the stripedog, the badger attacked first.

Daraga remained in a crouch for what seemed far too long. Falcontooth's claws were nibbled down to stubs as he looked on the first exchange of the battle. The badger brought her club down hard against the ground and gave a grunt of confusion when there was no longer a stoat there.

Standing from where he'd rolled, Daraga struck back, whipping his knife keenly through the air towards his opponent's head. The tip was only paw's length from her eye when she punted it from the air with the handle of her weapon. With a resounding growl she lunged again, fury osmosing into her gargantuan pool of strength.

Unarmed, the stoat was forced to roll once again. He dodged two, then three hefty crashes of the wooden implement before leaping up and into the lowermost branches of a great elm opposite the walnut he'd come from. Rounding, the badger split the narrow end of the limb into halves with her teeth and clawed upwards. But again, Daraga was not there.

"Please please please don't get killed, Daraga..!" The warrior's brother whimpered. Daraga stopped to catch his breath in a slightly higher branch and glared down at him.

"Workin' on that!" He was forced to leap back again as the hardened end of the cudgel swept upwards at him, breaking a swath of leafy twigs away just inches from his paw. The badger was climbing the tree after him. She gave a grunt of triumph at the look of sudden anxiety crossing his camouflaged face, "Now shut up! 'Tis hard enough tryin' to fight without you distractin' me!"

"He must be mighty strong t' be huckin' it up that tree like that..." Bowflogg was at a loss, squinting up into the torrent of branches being laid waste to by the passage of the protective badger, "I mean... Thunder! That's not a little tree..! Those limbs're... so far apart an'... Oh, great, now I'm rootin' for th' bloody vermin..."

Falcontooth tried to pelt the hare with a clod of earth, but it disintegrated as soon as it left his paw.

"That 'vermin' is my brother!"

"Er, sorry..." The hare blushed in embarrassment under his tawny fur, "Forgot that for a sec..."

"How d'we stop 'em from killin' each other..?"

"Uhhh..." Bowflogg stared and sweated as Daraga reappeared up even higher in the elm, with his matriarchal wagon boss hotly following him at every step, "I...I dunno. I never had t' break up a real fight before..."

Up the tree, the badger was beginning to snarl in frustration at how her quarry was always just a few pawlengths out of reach. She shattered yet another of the gradually thinning branches and scrambled higher to reach the stoat. Daraga continued to ascend, judging his moment with care and beginning to pant as his pursuer began to speed up.

Heedless of how near she was to the peak of the grand old tree, the badgermaiden gave one final push and found herself level with the vermin fighter, with only the skinny vertical trunk between them. Daraga waited even then, his eye on her right paw as it drew back to strike.

_THUMP!_

The stoat grabbed the central trunk in both paws and swung himself around the tree. Both knees collided heavily with the badger's right shoulder. Before she could catch herself both her footpaws were dangling in empty space and her left paw's blunt claws were only barely scraping at the elm bark.

_CRIK! CRIKCRIKCRIK!_ **_THUMP!_**

Several unsmashed limbs slowed her fall, but not by much. She hit the leaf loam like a fallen tree herself, a shower of rent leaves coming down a second after. Bowflogg dashed up, prancing with worry at the still form.

"E-Eyaaaaah! Y've killed 'er!"

"B-brother..! Ya killed 'er!" Falcontooth was torn between celebration and a new longing to agree with the hare, "Couldn't you 'ave run!?"

"No." Daraga slid down the understory of the elm by one paw, glaring at his brother in an accusing manner, "And I didn't kill th' stripedog, ingrate. There ain't much that _can_ kill a stripedog."

"But then...then..."

"Ah, shut yore blubberin' mouth! Ain't ya gonna thank me for keepin' that great berserkin' monster from ya?" The warrior seethed through his teeth as he recovered his knife from a rotten stump in the ferns, "C'mon, we gotta get outta 'ere before the rest of those woodlander types get 'ere..."

"What for?"

"They'll try an' kill us. Again."

"But..." Falcontooth looked back on where the young hare was gently slapping the unconscious badger's face with a damp leaf to bring her around, "But I made a friend! They wouldn't kill us if they knew our side t' this whole thing, right?"

"'Fraid they still might," Daraga said, grunted as he sheathed his weapon. "Now let's go!"

Falcontooth blinked back confused tears as his brother vanished into the deep ferns, leaving a narrow path for him to follow. Again he looked on the young hare. With a heavy sigh he approached and crouched down by the badger as well.

"What're y' doin'?" Bowflogg had heard the exchange between the two stoats, and wasn't sure he believed it. Falcontooth was calling him friend? Well, he had offered to go to a tavern run with the vermin. Was that friendship? "Y' should catch up with your brother, Draggyragg or whatever."

"Why should I?"

"...Beg pardon?"

"I don't wanna go with him." Falcontooth lowered his head, "I know, he's my brother, but he's always been... er, well... verminous. Mean an' such. Treated me like I'm stupid."

"... Oh."

"So I think I'm better off stayin' with beasts that're kind t' each other, right?"

"That...might work," Bowflogg said, dazed. Of course, the band of goodbeast refugees were probably not the best example of the so-called kinder nature of their clade, but there was no need to tell the stoat that. "But y' better let me wake up Widecatt..."

The stoat sat up straight and blinked.

"...'Widecatt'..?"

"Yeah."

"...We're all gonna get on just fine."

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Whoo! That's the end of that one, folks! Let me know if ya want t' hear more of these characters in the future! Fave and review please! ;)


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